Seeing You
by Shayotita
Summary: Scar was gone before he could say anything else, now just a shadow on the streets, on her way back home to her companions, her night of being alone over. She smiled at Slash's reply to her good bye. Yeah, she would be seeing him around.


**Seeing You**

* * *

Scar stopped, turning her muzzle to the full moon above her, she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath of the salt air. The sea breeze blew her red hair, from her forehead to her ruff, about in little swirls, as if it were trying to escape from the rest of her and fly away. She had her ears back, far enough that she could feel the two earrings in her right ear against the side of her head. She knew she could go no farther without much more stealth than she cared to exhibit at the moment, without being surrounded by Kraang. The alien invaders were thick among the shoreline of the city. No one was getting or out of NYC, by land or by sea. She kept an ear, and nose, out for anything that would denote she was not alone.

Alone was what she needed to be at the moment.

She had fled from decaying townhouse which she was staying with her 'friends' for her own emotional sanity. If she heard one more snip come out of Mezccal or Mondo Gecko's mouth, she was going to snip someone's mouth off.

"Where are you going?" Mezccal asked when Scar began to stalk toward the front door.

"Away from you!" she snapped, and had to use all of her willpower not to slam the door shut behind her.

Her annoyed wanderings had lead her here, as close to the sea as she could get without being overtaken by the aliens that had overtaken the city itself. The smell of salt water always seemed to soothe her, it washed away the smells of other things, like smoke, the ozone of laser fire, tortoise.

Tortoise?

"Hey there, Pup," said a gravelly voice from her left. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Scar turned her head to the sound, and out of the shadows of the alley she could just see the outline of a spiked testudine. He came out of the shadow of the building, the half moon revealing the large tortoise that she'd met only once before.

"Who were you expecting to see here, Slash?" she asked, swishing her tail and curling her lip slightly. He towered over her, with a small head on a large, broad body, a carapace adorned with protruding barbs. It unnerved her, his size. It was imposing, and she felt she had little in the way of being imposing back. The breeze, smelling of sea, blew the tails of his face mask like two pony tails behind him. He stayed on the other side of the alley from her, as if deciding if it was worth his moving any closer.

"Kraang," he answered, simply.

"Not any here," she waved her hand to indicate the alley around them. "I'm sure that you'll find some closer to the water, though." She rolled her eyes.

"Where are you're friends?" he asked, taking a step closer into the alley. The moon shone on the top of his shell, the protrusions causing shadows in strange patterns on his scutes.

"Not here," she replied. "I came out here to be alone." Her voice was more severe than she meant it to be, the harshness directed at her absent companions than at him.

"I'll leave you be then," he said, turning to go, the shadows from his spikes moving slowly as he did.

"You can stay," she amended, a bit too quickly. "It's a free country," Scar shrugged her shoulders. She twisted her mouth, and sighed. "Or, at least it used to be."

Slash chuckled, a deep sound that seemed like it came from underground and made her chest rumble, even from across the thin alleyway. "Yeah," he turned back around. "Times have changed."

Scar looked up at the moon again, "Yeah," she agreed.

"You seem to have been doing alright for yourself," Slash said. "You're not limping anymore."

"I told you," she said, "that Kraangdroid got in a lucky strike."

"Sure," he nodded, his voice patronizing. "I can believe that." His beak sported an amused, knowing smile.

The smile surprised her. She hadn't seen him smile before, their first and last encounter not being the kind of place for smiles. A Kraang scanning orb had spotted her and her companions, and none of them were able to get close enough to it to disable it. They'd made a retreat after realizing that, only to run into a contingent of Kraangdroids converging on a large, spiked tortoise.

Slash looked as if he was holding his own against the alien forces, but any enemy of the Kraang was an ally of theirs. The scanning orb joined the fight, but between the five of them, they'd been able to make sure none of those aliens or their technology would be operational again.

Not without some minor injuries, however. Scar had been kicked in the thigh by a Kraangdroid, hard enough that muscle bruising had taken more than a week to heal. Slash had cracked the offending Kraangdroid with his morning star, leaving a crumpled mass of crushed metal of pink goo that had once been an alien. Her leg was healed now, though, it didn't even ache at the end of the day any longer.

She gave a frown in return to his smile, she liked his smile. It looked good on him. It made him more impressive, and the sensation of a being as solid and imposing as him thrilled her slightly. She rolled her eyes again. "I guess I never thanked you for destroying that Kraangdroid for me," she said nonchalantly.

"No," replied Slash. "You didn't."

There was a moment of quiet, where the only sound was the sea wind in her ears, and the slightly flapping noises that his mask tails made.

She swished her own tail against the breeze, and sighed heavily. "Thank you," she huffed.

He chuckled again, and again her torso vibrated with the sound. "You're welcome."

Scar turned to go, the thrill of something imposing was not enough to keep Scar around when she was feeling as annoyed as she was, even if it was not at him. Just as she opened her mouth to say her goodbyes, a familiar whirling of servos and gears was brought on the wind, followed by the quick smell of metal-tinged ozone.

She didn't even have time to act before registering the smell or the sound, before a triangle formation of Kraangdroids came around the corner, guns at the ready. She and Slash scattered as laser fire littered the air around them.

They ended up on opposite sides of the street, with Scar leaping on top of a dumpster edge, her feet dancing on it sidewise to keep her balance. She concentrated on one of the Kraangdroids that was aiming at her, using all of her willpower to see, in her mind's eye, an arm, hand outstretched with the fingers together. She sent the vector down in a chopping motion, slicing the legs off of the Kraangdroid at the hip. It fell forward to the ground in its front.

Slash strafed against the wall of the building to avoid the laser fire. He brought his morning star up, pushing against the wall with his foot to give himself room to swing it above his head. It made three rotations in the air before he brought it down on a Kraangdroid's head, crumpling the robot and trapping the squid-like alien inside the metal body. With another swing, he was on the Kraangdroid that had its legs amputated. The Kraangdroid raised it torso, and aimed the gun at the tortoise, but before it could fire, the morning star came down on its back with a sickening squishing sound.

The third Kraang aimed its gun at Slash. Scar braced herself on the side of the dumpster, "seeing" a hand gripping the gun and squeezing. The gun it was holding crumpled in on itself, curling upward, toward its arm. The gun fired, sending a laser beam through the Kraangdroid's robotic head. It fell to the ground, forced backwards by the blow.

Slash spun around, to see the Kraangdroid drop.

"You're welcome," Scar said, jumping down from the edge of the dumpster.

Slash looked at the three Kraangdroids, the fight had been over in an instant, neither one of them had even broken into a sweat. He chuckled, a deep, throaty sound that seemed to come from deep in his shell instead of his throat. "Not bad, you're pretty and useful."

Scar blinked, taken off guard for a moment by the comment. She recovered quickly, though, and huffed and rolled her eyes with a swish of her tail. "We're even now," she cocked her hip to the side.

Slash looked at the crumpled gun again, and then back to her. "I guess so."

Scar turned, but stopped when she heard him say, "Hey, I never caught your name."

"Scar," she replied.

"I'm Slash," he said. She wasn't sure if he knew she already knew his name or not.

"See you around, then, Slash," Scar said, looking over her shoulder at him thought her eyelashes and swishing her tail slowly.

"Yeah," the tortoise answered in his gravelly voice. "See you around."

Scar was gone before he could say anything else, now just a shadow on the streets, on her way back home to her companions, her night of being alone over. She smiled at Slash's reply to her good bye. Yeah, she would be seeing him around.


End file.
